Showing posts with label car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label car. Show all posts

Old and Strange Vehicle Photos

 It's photo Wednesday again, or whatever day you happen to be reading and I happen to be posting. Staying on a schedule has turned out to be harder than I thought, especially since I'm editing one book and still working on the first draft of another.

The subject wasn't hard, though, because as I looked through old photos I found a number that had two things in common: old or unusual vehicles, taken at an inopportune time. In other words, snapshots. For instance, in the above photo I was taking pictures of an unusually large load that was being escorted through town at the time. Then I caught sight of this car, which I've seen drive through town many times, but never managed to capture before.
 

It was the same in this case. (I was stopped!) I had already brought out my phone to get the car ahead of me, when I saw an Avilla Fire truck go by and tried to get them both in the frame. Which is dumb.

(By the way, these were all taken at least a couple of years ago, so ignore the license plates.)

Elvis has stopped for Starbucks!


This truck, you'll agree, can go for hundreds of miles with that spare tank on its back.

  


A pretty much normal car, but as I was photographing it, it was photographing me.

 
I was parked right outside my job as I arrived for my shift. I didn't bother to ask the other dispatchers if anyone could afford it.

 


This was apparently just being used as a passenger car. I never saw the driver, so I can't tell you if it's his or hearse.

 

Emily and I both like camping, so I showed her this. But she said no.
 In my unpublished novel We Love Trouble, a couple and their dog travel around in a huge RV towed by an equally large pickup truck. I'm thinking of going to a former fire truck as above, but the logistics of maneuvering that thing around are pretty intimidating.

 

 

You can’t find our cars here, but here are some places to find us and our books:

 

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

Remember: You can read in cars, too.

 

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Location: Noble County, IN, USA

Baby You Can Drive My Car, If You Can Find It

 I kept a secret for the last year, but now it's time to let that secret escape.

In September of 2016, our beloved Ford Focus fell victim to a guy trying to turn into traffic with the setting sun in his eyes. We replaced it with what became equally beloved, a 2014 Ford Escape, which I call burgundy but which is technically ruby red.


I cannot conceive of why there have to be fifty shades of red. When I became a volunteer firefighter, we had several fire trucks that were red. We had one that was burgundy. That's it. The names of colors never made us hungry.

Anyway, this car had a backup camera and a computer screen, neither of which I saw any use for, both of which I now wouldn't do without. We drove that car all over everywhere. Well, four states, anyway, and about two dozen state parks, not to mention Chicago. Don't get me started on Chicago.

It always amused me, how many ruby red SUVs we noticed on the road after that. Probably just the bias of us having one, but it seemed like we saw them everywhere.

"You get a ruby SUV, you get a ruby SUV--you all get a ruby SUV!"

When it developed a very small radiator leak I wasn't too concerned, until nobody could find the leak. I mean nobody, including mechanics and the dealer. Then one of the spark plugs started acting up. Then everything started acting up.

We drove it a LOT, mind you.

But estimates for fixing the problem, assuming we could figure out what the problem was, brought us into the "nickle and diming us" phase of car ownership. We needed a new car. Emily started researching, and I looked around.

Do you see Emily? I didn't--I almost got into the wrong car.

We found a car that was a heck of a deal, if we were willing to drive some distance to look at it. We did. We looked. We fell in love.

Much to our surprise, we drove back home in a different car than the one we'd left in. Having learned my lessons, I embraced the changes that came with a vehicle five years newer. It has so much extra safety equipment that the insurance cost actually went down.

It also has heated seats, and a heated steering wheel, two things I used to make fun of. No more. The screen showed us where we were and where we were going, and the computer could connect our phones (audio book, yay!), make us hot tea, warn us if we were approaching a politician with his hand out, and even play the radio.

And it had remote start.

Whoever invented the remote start needs to win the Nobel Prize For Awesome.

As we headed home, I suggested to Emily that we play a little game. "Let's not tell anyone we bought a car, and see how long before anyone notices."



You see, we replaced the ruby red 2014 Ford Escape with a ruby red 2019 Ford Escape.

The photo above shows them together--the new one's on the right. We took the front license plate off, but there's still a considerable difference in the front. In the back, not so much.

A few of my family members noticed right away--nobody else did unless I pointed it out to them. After all, someone else's car is not something the average person pays close attention to. Still, it was a lot of fun having the secret.

It was also a lot of fun seeing my speed in kilometers per hour: The car comes from Canada.


 

Remember, you don't have to drive somewhere to buy our books ... although if you want to, why not?

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